Adjustment to hemodialysis treatment through behavioral controls

The present study was conducted to examine the hypothesis that compliant chronically ill patients, typically described as adjusted, reinforce more positive social environments using behavioral controls than noncompliant patients, typically described as maladjusted. Specifically, it is hypothesized that diet-compliant chronic hemodialysis patients emit significnatly more active involvement-in-treatment behaviors and more social behaviors than diet-noncompliant chronic hemodialysis patients. Subjects, who ranged in age from 30 to 77 years, were outpatients at a kidney center. Behavioral observations were conducted to assess the occurrence or frequency of (1) four involvement-in-treatment behaviors that are routinely taught to all patients and (2) two social behaviors, which were patient verbalizations and smiles. The results showed that compliant patients emitted significantly more involvement-in-treatment behaviors and smiles than noncompliant patients. Results support the proposed control framework that compliant, in contrast to non-compliant, chronically ill patients have recourse through positive behavioral controls when adjusting to the stresses of illness. It was proposed that through these controls, compliant patients reinforce positive environments rather than simply respond to life circumstances as given.     

Promoting the Culturally Sensitive Diagnosis of Mexican Americans: Some Personal Insights

This article presents a series of personal guidelines for promoting the culturally sensitive psychiatric diagnosis of Mexican American/Chicano clients. These guidelines are primarily based on the authors' collective experiences in diagnosing and treating this population.     

OTHER FOLKS' THEORIES OF MIND AND BEHAVIOR

Our everyday, basic understanding of people's mental stales and behaviors has recently been a lively topic of debate m the social science. This article addresses whether some aspects of our. European-American theory of mind are universal, by examining ethnographic and experimental reports of cultural variation. Implications of the variation for nativist theories of development are discussed and research strategies to augment our understanding are proposed.     

Suffering and sanctification: The religious context of Battered Women's Syndrome

Women who are physically and mentally abused by their partners have been described as suffering from Battered Women's Syndrome. An element of Battered Women's Syndrome is repeatedly returning to the abusive relationship, putting oneself at risk for further harm. Clinical case studies suggest that women who are strongly religious may believe it their duty to remain in abusive relationships to honor their marriage vows or to demonstrate their faith. This paper explores the basis of those beliefs and advocates a counseling perspective that frees abuse sufferers from a sense of obligation to their victimizers.     

Relationships between vocational development and self-concept in sixth grade students

Super, in his self-concept theory of vocational development, indicates the existence of a strong relationship between vocational development and the development of self-concept in adolescent and adult subjects. This study was designed to test for this relationship in preadolescent subjects. The study investigated the relationships among a measure of career maturity, self-concept, socioeconomic status, race, sex, place of residence, and age. The research sample included 300 randomly selected sixth grade students enrolled in 22 public schools in the state of Georgia during the fall quarter of 1978. Data were obtained by the administration of two instruments, the Career Maturity Inventory-Attitude Scale (CMI-AS) and the Piers-Harris (P-H) Children's Self-Concept Scale. A multiple regression analysis was utilized to analyze the data. Results of this study indicate a positive but low correlation between the total scores on the CMI-AS and the P-H Scale. All six of the self-concept factors on the P-H Scale were found to be significantly correlated to the CMI-AS score. Socioeconomic status was found to be significantly correlated to the CMI-AS score. Although race was not found to be a significant source of variance on the CMI-AS, the interaction of race and socioeconomic status was found to be significant. Sex, place of residence (urban and rural), and age were not found to be significant sources of variance on the CMI-AS.     

The role of test procedure in linguistic integration studies

The effects of type of recognition test procedure were studied in a Bransford and Franks (1971) integration paradigm. Subjects received a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test or a modified “forced-choice” test in which all the sentences for each idea set were presented at once and the “old” sentences had to be identified. Contrary to the usual Bransford and Franks results, in which a yes-no, one-sentence-at-a-time recognition procedure is employed, the ability to discriminate “old” sentences from “new” sentences was clearly observed. A bias for selecting more complex sentences, however, was found for the modified “forced-choice” procedure. A prototype learning model is described to account for these results and previous data.     

Predicting Perceptions of Victimization

Male and female subjects rated female victims of misfortune after observing videotapes of the victims detailing their injuries to doctors. Contrary to predictions of just wortd theory, subjects derogated culpable victims more than innocent victims. When observers identified with the victim, through political ties, derogation was reduced. It was concluded that responses to victims are described by a balance theory framework in which the observer's relationships to the victim and the victimizing agent determine whether (s)he will react to victims with sympathy or derogation. It was further concluded that these relationships can be predicted from an understanding of the social and political context shared by the perceiver and the victim.     

Children's understanding of the knowledge prerequisites of drawing and pretending

Many young children will claim that someone is pretending to be something even when the person does not know what that something is. To examine whether children's failure to take knowledge prerequisites into account is part of a more fundamental problem in recognizing how mental representations constrain external ones, the authors asked children whether an artist who did not know what something was, yet whose drawing bore resemblance to it, was drawing it. The same questions were asked regarding pretending. Children performed similarly on pretending and drawing questions, and performance on both questions improved when the protagonists' point of view was emphasized. Performance for drawing improved somewhat when alternative goals were stated. Further, cross-sectional data indicated that understanding how knowledge relates to producing external representations increases gradually from age 4 to age 8, suggesting that experiential factors may be crucial to this understanding.     

Providing misleading and reinstatement information a year after it happened: effects on long-term memory

The question addressed here is whether misleading suggestions made to children a year after target events had occurred will alter long-term recall. One group (3-13 years old when injured and treated in a hospital Emergency Room) were given both misleading and accurate reinstating information a year later, and recall of target events assessed both 1 week and another year later (i.e., 2 years post-injury). A control group had recall assessed both 1 and 2 years post-injury. Misleading had little effect on children's recall 1 week later, although a few misled details were reported. However, a year later virtually none of the misleading information was incorporated into long-term recall. Rather, children were more, not less, accurate when recalling details about which they had been misled. Results were attributed to target events having been highly memorable and well rehearsed via previous recalls, and detection of discrepancies between memory and misleading information focusing attention on targeted details.